Many of us are one medical emergency away from financial wreck and ruin, and I am not talking about people without insurance.

Most people don’t realize that if you have a medical emergency and need emergency care or even major transportation, such as an airlift, your insurance company may deny coverage or pay at a greatly reduced rate if they deem it to be out of network. What may have been a bill that would have been a few thousand dollars can balloon to hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Congress tried to fix this with the No Surprises Act, which was designed to create a dispute resolution system that would remove the patient from the middle, but the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) wrote the rules to benefit the already profitable insurance companies instead of the patients and front-line medical personnel. The courts threw them out and told the HHS to rewrite them. Now we need our leaders in Washington to make sure the HHS gets it right and follows the intent of the bill.

Too many people have seen their life savings go away through no fault of their own. Come on, HHS, protect the public like you are supposed to.